One scene in Julie & Julia, which opens tomorrow, concerns a series of attempts by Julie Powell (Amy Adams) to cook simple poached eggs according to the directions given in Julia Child's book Mastering The Art Of French Cooking. It was part of Powell's year-long effort to cook her way through the entire book.

And it's going to sell a lot of copies of the book, even though the recipes call for not only pounds and pounds of butter but ingredients like, say, a calf's foot. (Not available at your supermarket, probably, but necessary for the aspics — kind of like meat Jell-O — that Powell and her friends and family gritted their teeth to get through.) The movie does kind of make you want to try something. And since I am nothing if not my own guinea pig, I decided to try the poached egg.

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